Extra Paper #3

Reference:
The role of tangible technologies for special education
Taciana Pontual Falcão
CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary:
The physicality and multisensory aspect of tangibles make them particularly suitable for children with special needs. However, there is little empirical research on tangibles for supporting cognition and learning difficulties. This paper is about research that investigates the role of tangibles in supporting attention, verbal memory and abstract thinking of children with learning needs, particularly when collaborating with peers.

Discussion:
I thought that this paper has good goals.  It is good to try to help those with special needs.  With the advancements in technology, there should be many ways to help them.  I think that this will help. 

Extra Paper #2

Reference:
Supporting medical communication with a multimodal surface computer
Anne Marie Piper
CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary:
This paper is about the utility of a multimodal surface computer for supporting medical communication between older adults and health care providers. Research involves a field study of health care communication practices, the design of a multimodal surface computer application, and an in-context evaluation of the technology at a local retirement community.  The multimodal surface computers will allow older adult patients to use the computers who would normally be intimidated by a mouse and keyboard set-up.


Discussion:
I was slightly interested in this paper.  I think that the design is good, and that the idea is good.  However, how important is it that older adult patients be able to interact with the computers?  I think that there could be a simpler way instead of using a large touch screen surface computer. 

Extra Paper #1

Title:
Heads-up engagement with the real world: multimodal techniques for bridging the physical-digital divide


Reference:
Simon Robinson
CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary:
 The vast and ever-increasing collection of geo-tagged digital content about the physical world around us has prompted the development of interaction methods for various different scenarios. However, the map-based views common on desktop computers are not always appropriate when considering mobile usage. This paper is about research to provide suitable methods that can encourage user interaction with geo-located digital content, avoiding unnecessary interference with the user's immersion in the physical world around them. The author wants to increase interaction with the world around the user rather than with an interaction device.

Discussion:
I thought that this was an interesting paper.  Most papers are about developing a new device to interact with.  It was nice to see a change toward making the interaction more focused on the environment.  I would consider using something like this in the future.  It would also be interesting if the interactions were more visual.

Paper Reading #25 - Using language complexity to measure cognitive load for adaptive interaction design

Reference:

M. Asif Khawaja, Fang Chen, and Nadine Marcus.

IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

This paper is about an adaptive interaction system.  Te system keeps track of the users' current cognitive load, and can change its response, presentation and interaction flow to improve the users' experience and performance.  The authors propose a speech content analysis approach for measuring the users cognitive load.  The system will analyze the users language and dialogue complexity.

Discussion:
I think that this system could be useful.  Unfortunately, this paper focuses on the analysis of the users load rather than what the system would do the help the users performance.  I think that that would be more interesting than this.

 

Paper Reading #24 - Mobia Modeler: easing the creation process of mobile applications for non-technical users

Reference:

Florence Balagtas-Fernandez, Max Tafelmayer, and Heinrich Hussmann.

IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

This paper is about a tool that would make it easy for people without programming skills to build mobile applications.  While there are mobile companies that are opening their APIs and tools, those without programming skills are unable to create something.  The authors present a tool to help this. They use the creating of an application in the area of mobile health monitoring as a proof of concept.

Discussion:

I think two things about this paper.  First, as a programmer, I think that it is horrible.  being able to program is an acquired skill, and why should people be allowed to take short cuts.  It is like developing something that could play the piano just by telling it what to do.  It takes the technical ability away from doing something.  Secondly however, I think that it could be interesting to see what people with no programming skills can do with a tool like this.

 

Paper Reading #23 - Evaluating the design of inclusive interfaces by simulation

Reference:

Pradipta Biswas, and Peter Robinson.

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

This paper is about a simulator that will help in the design and testing of assistive interfaces.  The system can predict interaction patterns from a variety of input devices.  They present a study done to evaluate the simulator.  They considered a representative application being used by able-bodied, visually impaired and mobility impaired people.  The simulator predicted task completion times with high accuracy.

Discussion:

I think that this is an interesting system.  I have already read about a paper on a system to help with assistive interfaces, but I was intrigued that this was focused on the interfaces rather than actually providing assistance.  This system would be helpful when evaluating systems.

Paper Reading #22 - From documents to tasks: deriving user tasks from document usage patterns

Reference:
Oliver Brdiczka

IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:
This paper is about a new system to assist users in task switching.  Most workers switch between multiple tasks in a day.  The switches require recovery time in between to get reacquainted with the new task.  Since these switches happen frequently in a typical work day, task management systems were developed to aid workers.  Typical systems, unfortunately, require a lot of investment on the user side, from either learning the system or training the system.  The new system proposed in the paper automates the estimations of users tasks from document interaction.  Instead of looking at the content of the documents, which can violate the users privacy, this system monitors the desktop activities and stores an identifier for each document on the users desktop. 


Discussion:
I think that this system could be useful.  I did like the fact that the system focuses on document switches rather than the information.  This means workers with classified information would still be able to use this system.  I am interested to see how this system gets developed further.